Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
As I prep for two classes on best practices in global navigation, I came across the Spanish-language website for GEICO and I noticed a small but non-trivial error. See if you notice it as well. GEICO does a number of …
I’ve long appreciated how Duolingo removes so much friction from trying on a new language — and demystifying languages in general. Duolingo now claims an impressive 500 million language learners around the world. Based on its latest year-end post, here …
Square has been slowly but steadily increasing its global reach, with support for 7 countries and four languages, including Japanese, French and even Catalan (in Spain). But on September 13th, Square announced web localization for a market that has nothing …
With the World Series approaching I wanted to share an odd localization oversight on ESPN. The following two screen shots are from earlier this year. See if you can spot the differences in how the baseball player Carlos Rodón‘s name …
A seemingly simple thing, an Español link in the header of WhiteHouse.gov. As seen above, the link toggles between English and Spanish. The past four years has seen an English-only website. Because language itself had become politicized. So getting back …
I first noticed this while creating the 2017 Web Globalization Report Card — not on the US website but the German site. But today Amazon rolled out support for Spanish for the US. According to CNET: A spokeswoman for the Seattle-based …
During my work for the Web Globalization Report Card I encountered a number of US-focused websites relying on language negotiation (also known as language detection) to make their Spanish-language websites impossible to ignore. Shown above is the overlay used on …
I’ve been revisiting a number of the websites that at one point were localized specifically for Spanish speakers in the US. And now I’m finding dead links. Home Depot had a site located at homedepotespanol.com and Lowe’s had one at …